LA PAZ – Bolivian President Evo Morales was admitted to a private clinic in the central city of Cochabamba for a routine medical checkup, the nation’s Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said Saturday, though some local media reported that the hospitalization was an emergency.

Since Friday night “President Evo has been in a clinic in the city of Cochabamba. He’ll be in the clinic all day Saturday. They are giving him medical exams and checkups to evaluate his state of health,” Linera said at an event where he announced that Morales would not be going that day to the city of El Alto near La Paz.

Morales had three speeches scheduled for Saturday morning in El Alto for three separate inaugurations of public works.

The vice president said that “this medical checkup was important” due to the intense workload of the president, who plans to resume his activities on Sunday, according to Linera.

“Like the sun, (Morales) is forever going from one side to the other, and that’s something the body can’t take. The president has been living like that for six years now, at the same rhythm since Jan. 22, 2006 until now, and any machine has its problems,” the vice president said.

On the other hand, the online edition of the Cochabamba daily Opinion said that “he was admitted (Friday night) as an emergency to Los Olivos Clinic.”

According to the vice president, he and other members of the government have “requested” that the president have a medical examination because they don’t want him “to have difficulties in his work.”

Morales, 52, was operated in November 2010 for tendinitis of the left knee in the same clinic.

Known for sleeping very little and calling the military and ambassadors to meetings before sunrise, Morales recommended to his ministers in January that they sleep well because it’s “more important to sleep than eat,” since “if you don’t sleep, you can easily go crazy.”

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